Dear government person: there are affiliate links in this post.   Canning, canning, canning. That’s pretty much been my life in between homeschool lessons, beekeeping lessons, and everything that goes with keeping home. It’s a good busy, though. By the end of it, I’m always very ready for cooler temperatures and the reprieve that winter brings. It makes me thankful to live in a climate that has a substantial winter because it almost forces us to rest, and that’s a good thing! Although I know I’ll be itchin’ to get my hands back in the dirt by late February. I fell in love with deep mulching my garden this year, and I just cracked the cover of The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book: Secrets of the Famous Year-Round Mulch Methodto see what else I can do to make the mulch work even harder for me next year. Here’s some of the things I’ve done to save money these past couple of weeks: 23 pints of salsa. I found this page on large batch salsa canning to be super, super, super helpful. I even printed it off so that I’d have a hard copy. That’s how helpful it was. The tomatoes were from my garden, the rest of the veg came from the farmer’s market. 8 quarts of applesauce (so far). The apples came from the ancient apple trees in my backyard. There are still many to be picked and made into more apple sauce (I’d like to have at least 25 quarts in the pantry before winter), apple butter, apple jelly, apple pie filling, maybe even apple juice. I’ll also dehydrate some into apple chips. […]

My beekeeping uncle gave me bags and bags of summer squash and zucchini when I went to his house to check on our beehives. He also gave me some rutabagas, eggplants, and cucumbers. Nom!! I printed some free handwriting worksheets and scissor skills worksheets from worksheetworks.com . Neat website! I dehydrated onions, bananas, and tomatoes. I cleaned my bathroom with a cleaner made of vinegar, water, and Lemon Essential Oil I’ve restarted an old habit that I used to have back when our budget was superduperinsanely tight. When I go to the store, of course I have a list and I walk in with the intent of not buying anything that isn’t on the list. I also keep my cellphone on “calculator” and each time I add something to the cart, I add it to my total so that I’m not surprised when I get to the cash register. But one of my best habits is: before I go to the cash register, I pull my cart off to the side where I’m not in anyone’s way. I look in my cart and really think about what I have. If there’s anything in there that was a sort of impulse-buy, or if it’s not something that I really need/want/will use/have a place for….I pick it up and either put it back on the shelf or hand it to the clerk and tell her that I’ve changed my mind about it. I made fresh pico de gallo using all produce from my garden. Pico de gallo is my FAVORITE. I don’t buy tomatoes from the store (they never taste as good!), so the only time of […]

  My husband went away last month for work. He was gone 3 weeks and made a lot of overtime. We were so looking forward to using some of that extra money to spruce up our kitchen a bit. Turns out, life had other plans. Murphy’s Law. One of our vehicles has needed over $1,100 worth of work in the last few weeks- and it’ll need even more work before winter. The other vehicle (our van) needs an inspection and possibly some other work- praying not too much. At first, I was feeling really grumpy that all of our “extra money” was going toward un-fun things like car repairs. And then…duh. Thank you Lord for that opportunity to make that extra money, which made these car repairs affordable to us rather than completely financially debilitating. That’s better. I’ve talked to my husband several times over the years about financial programs such as the Jim Sammon’s Financial Freedom Seminar (mentioned several times by the Duggars- I love them, though I didn’t love the seminar and my husband couldn’t even stay awake for longer than  minutes during it. True story.). And also Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. We don’t have a ton of debt. A small amount, mostly student loans. But we could definitely use some help in the planning department. I tend to get really excited about things like budgeting, and then I get a little fatigued by it and fall off the wagon. My husband absolutely loathes being stressed out by money. So we follow a general budget, but definitely not as structured as we could be (and structure would definitely help us at times). […]

  This post contains affiliate links. There is no extra cost to you, but if you click on a link and then purchase something, I do receive a small percentage as a commission. Thank you so, so much! Successes/Blessings: I harvested some mesclun from the garden for a salad. (pictured above) I don’t know why, but my lettuce the last 2 years has grown slower than molasses. I’m not sure what’s up with that. I used RIT to dye a cotton sleepsack and a changing pad cover that had been stained. I originally thought I’d have to buy replacements…but then this idea to just dye them a darker blue color struck me! I saved $25-$30 by doing this. My husband’s manager sent home another bag of overflow produce from his garden, including summer squash, zucchini, and a few bell peppers. I used some of our own compost to top dress my pepper and green bean plants. We stopped at the bread outlet while grocery shopping. We got 6 loaves of whole wheat bread, 2 loaves of cinnamon raisin bread, and 4 packages of bagels for $16. I’ve been leaving the central air off for the first half of the day and just turning it on around 3pm when/if the thermostat gets above 80 in the house. This is mostly to cool off bedrooms for naps and bedtime. We live in a 130 yr old farmhouse, and the upstairs (where all the bedrooms are) gets horribly stuffy. I did go slightly over our $400/month grocery budget this month, but it was out of anticipation of income loss. Sometimes my husband loses days out of his schedule […]